Tracy Morgan: "If My Son Was Gay, I'd Pull Out a Knife"

Tracy Morgan: “If My Son Was Gay, I’d Pull Out a Knife”

The audience walked out during the ’30 Rock’ star’s hate-filled show.

-PJ Gach

Tracy Morgan, who plays a (slightly) loveable and even more than clueless comedian on NBC’s 30 Rock, is under fire today from HRC and GLAAD. According to TMZ, Morgan, during a comedy gig at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on June 3, 2011, peppered his bits with various anti-gay slurs. At one point he stated that if his son told him he was gay, Morgan would stab him to death. Morgan also managed to combine bullying and anti-gay sentiment in this remark, “Gays need to quit being p**sies and not be whining about something as insignificant as bullying.”

It was noted that during his performance, many of the audience members walked out while he was making various anti-gay comments. After the show, the auditorium issued a statement, “The Ryman Auditorium regrets that people were offended by statements made by Tracy Morgan during his June 3 appearance.”

Today the HRC issued a statement, “Hateful remarks that mock youth suicides and the very real emotional and sometimes physical bullying LGBT kids face on a daily basis have no place in a comedy routine…If these allegations are true, Tracy Morgan must immediately accept responsibility and apologize. His employer, NBC Universal, also must come forward and condemn these atrocious comments.”

GLAAD president Jarrett Barrios told the Hollywood Reporter, “Tracy Morgan’s management needs to investigate these allegations and should they prove true, we call on him to remove these violently anti-gay remarks from his show and send a strong message that anti-gay violence is not something to joke about.”

UPDATE: At 11:53 am, Tracy Morgan issued an apology to the New York Times, “I want to apologize to my fans and the gay & lesbian community for my choice of words at my recent stand-up act in Nashville. I’m not a hateful person and don’t condone any kind of violence against others. While I am an equal opportunity jokester, and my friends know what is in my heart, even in a comedy club this clearly went too far and was not funny in any context.”